Every skull he picks up is an illustrious skull. This one was Leonardo. He invented the flying man, but the flying man has not e
xactly served his inventor’s purposes. We know that, mounted on his great swan (ilgrandeuccellosopra del dosso del suomagniocecero) he has other tasks in our day than fetching snow from the mountain peaks during the hot season to scatter it on the streets of towns.(“The Crisis of the Mind,” p. 5) Valery’s point about Leonardo’s skull was to show that ______.
Leonardo invented aerial irrigation
Leonardo invented the airplane
Leonardo’s Italy was lacking water
Leonardo could not have foreseen modern air warfare
In this excerpt, Valery's point is that Leonardo could not have foreseen modern air warfare, in spite of all his inventions and innovations. This can be understood when the speaker mentions "We know that, mounted on his great swan (ilgrandeuccellosopra del dosso del suomagniocecero) he has other tasks in our day than fetching snow from the mountain peaks...", which can make the reader understand that Leonardo's could not have seen farther away than his own time.
